20. When a Stranger Calls (1979)
We should be laughing our asses off asking “Why the hell didn’t she check on the kids?!” Why are we crying?
19. Terrified (2017)
It is seriously bullshit that this one cost me picking privileges from family movie nights at my sisters’. As far as kid’s dying in movies this is the best-case scenario! Imagine losing a child and being all like “Man, that sucks” or whatever, but then you get home and he’s sitting there in the kitchen all dug up and even moving around a little when you’re not looking! Seems like a huge improvement.
18. Feast (2005)
I will never understand what breeders do and do not get upset by. A monster crashes in through a window to eat some snot-nosed brat and you need to check the baby monitor “just to be sure.” Meanwhile, in the same scene, Judah Friedlander gets acid spit on him and you people give fuck all? Frank from “30 Rock?!” He’s given us so much!
17. Funny Games (1997)
It doesn’t matter if you go with the Austrian version or the American version, your dumb breeder friends will be the same amount of pissed at you for showing them this.
16. The Host (2006)
If you haven’t seen Bong Joon Ho’s monster movie, stop reading. If you have, you can probably guess how this one played to my buddy Carl who just welcomed his first daughter into this world. Any horror movie can kill a kid, but it takes serious vision to revolve your entire movie around saving a kid and having the plan fail in the last 10 minutes. That’s what makes “The Host” so cool, or as Carl said, “The single most alienating experience of my life, I don’t think we can be friends anymore.”
15. The Innocents (2021)
I haven’t seen it yet actually, I’m saving it for one of my last few remaining friends that give me movie-picking privileges so I have plausible deniability.
14. It (2017)
I know it’s a little sacrilegious to include the “It” remake and not the glorious 1990 original mini-series on a horror ranking. To the original’s credit, Georgie’s graphic death was filmed, but ultimately cut by censors. One of the few things the remake got right was correcting this injustice, a fact my friend Marry, mother of two, did not remotely appreciate. “You have to understand, as a parent, this is my worst nightmare!” Hey Mary, great news, amorphous alien sewer clowns do not exist!
13. Exorcist: The Beginning (2004)
You seriously can’t blame the filmmakers here, they were facing an insurmountable task—top “The Exorcist.” Showing a child violently ripped apart by hyenas was literally the only place they could go to even get close. Hey, why don’t you guys have a dog?
12. M3gan (2022)
Not the most graphic child killing on the market but you gotta give it up for a mainstream franchise killer murking a kid in her first outing, and even including it in the PG-13 version!
11. Martyrs (2008)
Sorry folks but revenge knows no age limit.
10. Maximum Overdrive (1986)
If the bitchin guitar licks of AC/DC don’t help you understand the hilarious audacity of a bike ride down a street full of murdered children nothing will. It’s not like this could actually happen! Those kids were killed by machines that came to life. By the time that happens your kids will be in college.
9. Alice, Sweet Alice (1976)
Yes, the murder of a child in a church is particularly brutal, but now you get to brag about this fucked up movie you saw! What’s that? That’s not a concern of yours? You’re more concerned with the well-being of the life you brought into this world? Can’t relate. Wanna get high?
8. Pet Sematary 2 (1992)
While the original “Pet Semetary” scores some gnarliness for featuring a kid killed in an accident, part 2 ramps things up with full-on child murder! Now before you go giving me the “every parent’s worst nightmare” spiel, there are three things you need to understand. Number one, the kid killed was a bully who himself was threatening to kill a kid, he had it coming. Number two, the kid the bully was going to kill was Edward Furlong, aka John Conner. You take him out and humanity is doomed! Number three, he gets his face ground up with a motorcycle tire, how fucking sick is that yo?!
7. Superstition (1982)
It’s not like you SEE the kid get his head chopped off, you only see it when it’s in the microwave, and then it explodes, so calm down.
6. Trick ’r Treat (2007)
You could be laughing at what a dork this kid is for trusting his principal in the first place but oh no, you’re busy scouring the internet to see if anyone on your kid’s school faculty has an arrest record. The death of that kid was faked for a movie. The death of this spooky movie night vibe is real and very much your fault.
5. Sleepaway Camp (1983)
I assumed my spawner friends could handle this classic since the killer is also a child, so it’s actually kid-on-kid crime, so like, it cancels out? Or like, is cute, or something? I don’t know, the point is I was way off.
4. Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)
I knew my friends were going to get lame when they all started paring off and spawning but I assumed some things would be unassailable, like the kid’s head melting into a pile of goo and bugs in “Halloween 3” after putting an evil mask on. Don’t give me that “If you had kids you would understand how upsetting that is” bullshit. If that is not the sacred cow of child murder on film I don’t know what is.
3. Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)
This one still gets me every time, even knowing it’s coming you’re like “There’s no way they’re going to do it” and then BAM! It is one of the most jaw-droppingly hilarious moments in all of cinema, provided you don’t “have a child of your own to imagine that happening to,” Honestly I don’t get why my breeder friends get so bent out of shape by this scene. It’s not like they killed a dog!
2. The Blob (1988)
They only actually show one snot-nosed little kid die, but it is a GREAT child death. We’re talking about the Cadillac of dead kids on film here. To this day I have no idea how they got the little shit so melty. My friends with kids didn’t care to speculate on the matter. God they suck.
1. Toxic Avenger (1984)
We all know the game. We all know the rules. Pedestrians, 25 points. Old people, 30 points. Kids under 12, 50 points. We’ve all been teenagers in a car joking about playing this game. You’re going to tell me you get zero satisfaction from seeing it played out in film just because “Having a kid changes everything?” Bullshit. Don’t pin this on little Trevor, you used to be cool and now you’re lame and that’s on you.
Honorable Mention: Immaculate (2024)
Technically this is just a post-birth abortion, which according to half the country is commonplace.
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